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Experienced vs. inexperienced writers:
Enjoy 336 words below ↴
Eddie Shleyner VeryGoodCopy, founder Work with me→
It’s a mindset, an ethos.
And it’s so easy to spot…
Michael Jamin is a television writer known for his work on shows like King of the Hill, Just Shoot Me, Wilfred, and Maron.
“The difference between an experienced writer and an inexperienced writer is often this,” says Jamin.
“The inexperienced writer thinks that their work should have been written on clay tablets and handed down from God. They don’t wanna touch it—‘My words! My precious words!’—and it can only be made worse,” he says. “Experienced writers, on the other hand, know that’s not the case. So an experienced writer can turn in a draft that’s a thousand times better than the inexperienced writer’s draft, and yet when they turn it in they’re wondering, ‘Does the second act break pop? Does the ending feel earned or does it feel random? Is there a way for me to make this better?’”
Michael Jamin earned an Emmy nomination for his work on the animated series, King of the Hill.
He shares an anecdote about the rehearsal process on sitcoms:
“We have five days of rehearsal,” he says. “[This time] is not just for the actors to learn their lines. It’s also for us to rewrite our own words to make them better. And if a script comes in—like, a draft from a writer—and it’s an ‘A’, we won’t take those five days off. We’ll spend those five days trying to turn an ‘A’ into an ‘A-plus’. It can always be better.”
I think this belief system applies to all writing:
Scripts, novels, vignettes and short stories, sales letters and love letters or anything else.
If you want to do A-plus work, you must 1) realize that it’s most likely ahead of your current version and 2) embrace how challenging it will be to get there:
Going from zero to 80 percent is easier than going from 81 to 90 percent; going from 91 to 95 percent is harder still; and going from 96 to 99 percent, depending on your deadline, might not be possible, but you’ll try. Right?
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